South Africans Vote in Local Elections as ANC Declines

JOHANNESBURG – South Africans went to the polls Wednesday in local elections that are expected to gauge the fortunes of the once-dominant African National Congress. The party led the country from white minority rule, but its support has steadily weakened over the past decade.

The vote will determine the leadership of South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities, along with 44 district councils and 205 local councils.

Johannesburg, the country’s largest city and economic center, is a major battleground. Often described as Africa’s richest city, it has been plagued by water shortages, power disruptions and other service failures—problems that have fueled widespread frustration with local government.

The city has had five mayors in four years since the previous local elections. It is now run by a fragile ANC-led coalition, making Johannesburg a prime target for the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s second-largest party.

The DA has nominated its former national leader, 75-year-old Helen Zille, as its mayoral candidate.

Zille has staged a series of publicity events to draw attention to what she describes as failures by the ANC and other parties to manage Johannesburg. Her actions have included snorkeling in a water-filled trench in the middle of a road and rowing an inflatable boat across a pond formed by a leaking water line in another part of the city of roughly 5 million residents.

Voters do not choose mayors directly. Instead, they elect council members, who select the mayors running the municipalities. Smaller parties can therefore become decisive players when coalition governments are formed.

In the 2021 local elections, the ANC received less than half the vote for the first time since apartheid’s white minority rule ended in 1994.

The party suffered another historic setback in the 2024 national elections, losing its 30-year parliamentary majority in a seismic shift for Africa’s largest economy. It subsequently formed a national coalition with the DA and other parties, while ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected as South Africa’s president.

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Although the parties now share power in a national unity government, they remain fierce competitors at the local level. Zille’s bid to become Johannesburg’s mayor will show whether the DA can expand beyond its traditional base in Cape Town, the country’s second-largest city.

The election is also the first local vote contested by the MK Party, led by former President Jacob Zuma. Zuma resigned as president amid corruption allegations in 2018 and was expelled from the ANC in 2024 after launching his own party.

The MK Party made an unexpectedly strong showing in the 2024 national elections, emerging as Parliament’s third-largest party. It has particularly strong support in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal in eastern South Africa.

Poor public services, especially unreliable water supplies, are central concerns for voters nationwide. Crime and unemployment also rank among the major issues, alongside a broader national debate over immigration.

Groups campaigning against illegal immigration have attracted growing attention and support in recent months across the country of 62 million people. They have criticized Ramaphosa and his government, while several parties have made opposition to undocumented migration a central theme of their local election campaigns.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa